


The Past is Over

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can't change the past," he'd said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Past is Over

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a three sentence tumbr meme (I know, I know), for the prompt: Crews/Reese, time travel. It got a little out of hand.

 

-

“You can’t change the past,” Crews had said, the smile that barely touched the corner of his lips the only relief from something they’ll both pretend wasn’t sadness in his eyes. _You can’t change the past_ , and yet here she is: twelve and a half years ago—one month before one of the most famous “killer cop” cases in history goes on trial, one week before a man is arrested for a crime he didn't commit, one day before her partner’s business partner is murdered.

She doesn’t know how she got here, but here she is. Here, with $2000 in her pocket that she didn’t have this morning when she was still living in 2007; here, with a scrap of paper in her hand that says this and this only: _you have one week._

She doesn’t need to ask what she has a week for, but she also doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. The only thing that’s ever cleared him is DNA evidence, and she is a ghost in a timeline she’s already existing inside. (There isn’t a small, barely audible part of her that thinks, just a little, that if she saves him, he’ll cease to be hers, because Crews is her partner, and partners have each other’s backs, even when it’ll cost them everything, even when it’ll cost them each other, even when the scrap of paper crinkles in a hand-turned-fist. She’ll save the man he was and lose the man he is, and maybe, _maybe_ —)

 

-

 

Six and a half days later, and maybe’s aren’t enough, maybe’s have never been enough, she’s choking on them, they’re catching in her throat and burning up her insides.

“You can’t change the past, Dani,” Charlie says, his lips twisting into something that’s too bitter to be a smile, and her hand tightens into something furious, into something that’s as sharp and dangerous as the beat of her heart. “Tom’s dead, and I’m going to figure out what happened. I know you’re trying to help—”

“You have to run,” she says. “Charlie,” she says, “you have to run. They’re going to arrest you, and they’re going to convict you. I’ve—I’ve tried everything I could, Charlie, but it’s over, you understand? _You have to run_.”

“I can’t run,” he says. “I’m a cop, and cops don’t run. You say you believe me, then believe that. I can’t run.”

 

-

 

She wakes up gasping, gasping, gasping for breath, her fingers running around her wrists, her eyes still on the memory of the handcuffs snapping around Crews’.

She swallows it down, pretends it away, pretends the crumpled up paper that still says _you have one week_ isn’t sitting next to her on her bed, pretends it was all a bad-food dream, that her hands aren’t shaking, that the first time she sees him afterwards she isn’t resisting the urge to run her hands down his arms, reassure herself that he’s still here, still with her.

 

-

 

Three weeks later, and they’re under gunfire, pinned down inside a Laundromat.

“You run,” he tells her, “I’ll cover you.”

“I can’t run,” she says, the words spilling out of her before she can choke them back. “Cops don’t run.”

He turns to look at her, and there’s sudden recognition in his eyes, and she can see the pieces falling into a puzzle shaped like nothing either of them have ever seen before. Later she’ll wonder if some part of her meant to say them, if something inside of her needed to get out, if she had to know, fuck the rest.

Later she’ll clean a cut on his arm from a shard of glass as a window was shot in, and she’ll feel his eyes on her the entire time, sketching her out from memory and his too-close gaze.

 

-

 

Almost seven days, and there’s a knock on the door. She looks at her watch. She’s read the Tom Seyboldt file, she knows how this goes. She says it anyway, says it because she has to, says it because the words are heavy on her shoulders.

“They’re here,” she says. “Charlie, you’ve gotta run.”

He doesn’t run, of course. He doesn’t do anything but stand there. She can’t be brought in on this, though, she can’t be in a photograph, can’t show her ID, can’t get fingerprinted, can’t give a statement, can’t exist in the here and now. She has to let him go. This him, this him that isn’t hers but almost is, she has to let him go.

 _You can’t change the past,_ she thinks, bitter laughter bubbling up on her lips, and then she does something she never planned to do. She reaches up and grabs hold of his tee shirt just below the shoulders, and she pulls him into her, pulls him down into her, pressing her lips against his.

(This is still a married man, a man who loves his wife, a man who will continue to love his wife long after she leaves him. This is a man who doesn’t belong to her. This is a man she doesn’t get to save.)

She kisses him, once, briefly, and then she turns and runs for the back. She’s slipping away as he answers the front door. She turns the corner and then another and slips out towards the front just in time to see cops that only days ago had Charlie’s back snap the cuffs on him. She walks, and she keeps walking, and she doesn’t stop.

 

-

 

Crews’ hand cups the back of her elbow as she steps back, the white bandage clean and steady against his skin. Clean, and steady, and everything she’s not.

“Hey,” he says, and she wonders if he sees the urge to bolt in her eyes, feels it in the pulse just below her skin. “Hey,” he says. “Cops don’t run.”

She looks up at him, and his eyes are confused, but also so certain that it sends a shiver down her spine. His hand tightens on her elbow in reflex, as if he’s afraid she’s pulling away from him, and she shakes her head, shakes her head, shakes her head.

“I’m not running,” she says, and his smile is full, and heady, and all hers, and this time when she pulls him down into her he gives himself over entirely into the kiss. Gives himself entirely to her.

 _You can’t change the past,_ he’d said, but she’s got the now, and right now that’s all that matters.  


 

-


End file.
